1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of issuing a license to use a software application with a license management system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, a license management system for managing a license to use a software application to be installed to an information processing apparatus has been proposed. In such a system, a license to use a software application to be installed is issued in association with specific information of the application so as to prevent unauthorized use of the software application to be installed (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-207199).
Further, the following method has been proposed (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-5659). A computer for issuing a license gives a distribution license only once to a license server computer on a network at a side of a computer for executing an application. Then, a plurality of execution licenses are distributed based on the distribution license on the network at the side of the computer for executing the application. In the case of executing the application on a plurality of computers, the execution license and the distribution license are checked against each other. More specifically, the execution license eliminates a need to communicate with the computer for issuing a license a number of times and request to issue the license.
Recently, various kinds of software applications are integrated to provide a package of a plurality of software applications as an objective-based solution. In such cases, a user needs to acquire each license of the plurality of software applications as is conventionally done. Further, if a new software application is added to an existing package and released, a license is required each time the software application is released.
To be specific, in the conventional cases, if, for example, an additional software application is installed, it is necessary to access a license issuing server and acquire a license each time an additional software application is installed, which is a very troublesome and time-consuming process. In addition to being troublesome, if communications with a license issuing server are stopped, an added software application could not be activated until the communications are reestablished.
Moreover, these techniques cannot collectively issue licenses for a plurality of software applications in response to a request to issue a license for one software application.